1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to cleaning devices, and more specifically to a broom and detachable whisk broom.
2. Description of Related Art
Brooms are common cleaning devices that have been used for hundreds if not thousands of years. Bundles of natural material such as twigs, grass, and corn husks were used in ancient times to clean floors and hearth areas. A popular material was branches of broom, a yellow flowering shrub. As civilization advanced, broom making became a skilled trade with artisans known as “besom squires” in Anglo-Saxon England. Besom being the name for a cleaning tool consisting of a bundle of sticks or twigs used to whisk dirt away.
In the United States, a species of Sorghum known as broomcorn became the standard material for brooms in the northeastern United States, and an industry was born. The Shakers, a Christian religious sect that excelled at handicrafts, perfected various broom styles including the flat broom and the whisk broom.
With modern day materials such as plastics, many brooms are now made entirely from plastic, although there still remains a thriving demand for natural fiber brooms. Whether natural fibers or plastic, brooms typically are made with a handle to allow the user to operate the broom without bending over. There are also, however, specialized brooms known as whisk brooms or dusters that do not have handles, and are used to remove dirt and other unwanted materials from small areas or objects such as tables, clothing, a small area of a floor, and the like. There are also times when a broom with a handle is needed for a particular cleaning job as well as a whisk broom. On these occasions, both style brooms are maintained and used. When a whisk broom is needed while a handled broom is being used, the user usually stops work with the handled broom, locates the whisk broom, brings the whisk broom to the area of use, and once finished using the whisk broom, returns it to where it came from. Such an approach can waste time, especially if the whisk broom is not readily at hand or cannot be easily located.
What is needed is a handled broom that can also be used as a whisk broom.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a broom with a detachable whisk broom. It is another object of the present invention to provide a broom with a whisk broom that forms a detachable part of the broom where the whisk broom bristles become part of the broom bristles when attached to one another.
These and other objects of the present invention are not to be considered comprehensive or exhaustive, but rather, exemplary of objects that may be ascertained after reading this specification and claims with the accompanying drawings.